Io is not a pleasant place to be. A good look at the moon's surface reveals why: it's covered in lava flows and volcanic pits composed of basalt. Building an offworld empire here of all places is going to be anything but easy.

It’s been a while since I played, so I’m working through the tutorials. This game is so impressive! The gameplay is slick, and the UI is smooth as butter.

I do have one minor UI question, though. I know I can open the Menu by hitting ESC, but is there a hotkey for closing it? ESC doesn’t seem to do the trick. It’s not a big deal, but I love hotkeys. Which is one reason I love this game – there’s a hotkey for just about everything.

I’m still struggling with the base game. I eat Managing Expectations once, but was unable to repeat that accomplishment. Help please! I’ve watched a bunch of YouTube videos and read any strategy guide I could find on the Internet. I desperately want to love this game but at some point I must move onto something else. What am I missing?

Do you pause to take stock (no pun intended) of the situation? I found this helped me wrap my head around the decision making aspect of the game while I was learning. As I got better with that I tried to pause the game less and less for the Daily Challenges and (possibly) multiplayer.

When I return to it I can see myself having to do the tutorials again to shake off the dust.

I’m not sure more pausing would help. There’s something fundamental I’m just not getting about the buying and selling of resources. Mostly I’m just trying to switch production around to what seems most profitable at the moment, but I’m not getting how to make money off the market.

ure more pausing would help. There’s something fundamental I’m just not getting about the buying and selling of resources. Mostly I’m just trying to switch production around to what seems most profitable at the mom

I’d recommend posting your replay to the Discord channel: https://discord.gg/0pQ0rgV4DDHPGXNe
We have a very friendly community that loves giving advice to new players to give them tips. In fact, they’ve been discussing typical new player mistakes in the #general channel recently:

I really should invest more time into it and try to break myself of my bad habits. I totally imagine this is the sort of game that once it starts to click, the game opens up and you start to fully appreciate the design.

Like Soren said, the people on Discord are perfectly willing to help (and are definitely better at the game than yours truly), but if you’d rather not go over there you can always post a replay here and I’d be happy to take a look for you.

I had forgotten how difficult the Proof of Employment (4th learning challenge) is. I came a lot closer my last try. I think I was diversifying too much. I was the last player to get bought out this time.